Planting redwoods and oaks today! January 18, 2007

Hi.  My name is the Plantman.  I am a landscaper with 17 years experience in the “green industry”.  My credentials include a B.S. degree from Cal Poly S.L.O. in Environmental Horticulture, a Pest Control Advisor license (CA), Landscape Contractor’s License (CA-C27), PLANET Landscape Maintenance certification, California Certified Water Auditior certificate, wholesale nursery management, as well as commercial and residential landscape construction and maintenance experience. 

If you would like to take a journey with me as I embark on a fun project to fill a fairly large greenhouse with plants and trees for eventual sale and donation, please be my guest.  My methods for collecting and growing these plants will include sprig hunting, seed and cutting propagation, as well as relocation of “volunteer” plants that have emerged where they may not likely survive otherwise.

If you follow this journey, you will learn about plants and trees as I document and photograph the process each week from a beautiful small coastal town in Northern California called Pescadero.

Now for a bit of history behind the nursery where we will begin the journey.  The property lies about 5 miles in from the coast and was originally my grandmother’s small wholesale potted plant nursery, supplying interesting and different plants to retail nurseries in San Francisco and the Bay Area in the 1970’s.  My father then took over the business in 1982 and sold bedding annuals in gallon cans until his retirement last year.  I did not end up taking over the family business but instead persued a career in landscaping, and now this nursery has empty greenhouses and fields.  In visiting a few months ago I noted to myself how sad and empty this place seemed; a once bustling business now quiet and unoccupied.  I began to think that this would be a great opportunity to have some fun and enjoy some tranquility from the fast pace of life by slowly bringing it back to life (albeit on a much smaller scale.)

The first thing I decided to do was to begin recycling some of the many leftover plastic cans and reusing the soil that had been dumped in piles from the plants that did not sell.  This combined with a free water supply from the attached house’s well made for a perfect beginning.  The photos you see are this process in the making.  The water supply had to be run to the greenhouse to begin as the nursery’s tank and pump are no longer operational, and now I am installing valves and drip irrigation to connect to an irrigation clock that I had left over from a landscape project.  The ideal trees to begin with then came to me.  Let’s start with oaks and redwoods.

But enough about history.  Log on next time to learn the process behind the collection of these samples (it involves hiking), planting, and how the drip irrigation system was installed.

Plantman